The Taste of Surreality
by YamiNoTomoyo
Summary: He was frustrated today, she realized. It was a subtle fact which few could have recognized. It was the strangest thing that she was able to see this, but see it she did... Dramione


She wasn't sure when she had started this silly, stupid habit of hers, but she knew that there was no stopping.

He was frustrated today, she realized. It was a subtle fact which few could have recognized. It was the strangest thing that she was able to see this, but see it she did.

It was easy for her. His face, his pure, unwrinkled face, was void of any emotion but the hint of superiority he carried with him always. No, it was in those eyes, those eyes as gray as a clouded and turbulent ocean and just as deep, that she saw a storm brewing. Frustration. Another hint was in the way his eyes were not warily looking around, but rather fixed upon some speck in the air, submerged in thought. Add to it that he stroked his luminous platinum hair back every two and a half minutes, as opposed to every five minutes or so, and she knew that he was outraged with some aspect of life at the moment.

And in that little square of land, that secluded place that, in her mind, was separate from the rest of the world, she was the only person capable of seeing him. All of him.

Her mouth quirked upwards slightly, and she turned away, tapping her fingers against the table incessantly, thoughtful.

She imagined quietly what he was angry at. Perhaps his lovely mother had gone upon a tangent about how it was his duty to marry and carry on the family line. That would set him in a right state – he was a man who had his own desires and ambitions for life, and would not set them aside without decent incentive. Not even family pride could sway him from a desire to remain alone, without some arranged wife who would doubtlessly serve to irritate him more.

Or, perhaps, he had visited his dear father, whose stay in prison would continue for the rest of his life. She could only speculate upon the man's relationship with his father. This man before her might loathe his father, but he might just as well look up to him, or at least look upon him fondly. It was a complete guess, and her opinion changed with every day.

No, the source of his anger today was a mystery. And she was quite content to keep it that way. She smiled to herself, and then smiled more when an elderly man she looked upon as a friend emerged from his shop carrying a small glass bowl with two scoops of perfectly ordinary pumpkin ice cream. He rarely emerged from the shop. When he did, it was to cater to his regular customers. After a month or two, she had found herself one of them.

With a smile and a thank you, she accepted the ice cream. The old man returned to his shop, and came out again – only, this time, he was not headed in her direction. Now, he went towards the man she was watching.

As usual, his order was two scoops, in a similar glass bowl, of chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate. She never would have pinned him for chocolate – perhaps a cream flavor, or something rich, such as raspberry. Yet, he ordered chocolate. Why? It remained, to her, a mystery. Few knew that chocolate was a _purely Muggle invention_, but wizards had shortly adopted the flavor, creating their own magical varieties – the most well-known being, of course, Chocolate Frogs. Chocolate also stood for everything that was sweet and delicious, tantalizing, melting, but always so bright and open. It was a flavor that children and adults both loved, and a flavor cherished rarely by the rich, whose tastes preferred tastes far less sweet.

So why did he, the superior, the wealthy, the _arrogantly_ unique wizard that he was, take so honest a delight in _chocolate_ ice cream?

It was a mystery she hoped she could someday answer. It was the mystery that kept her coming back day after day to enjoy pumpkin ice cream, eventually forcing her to ask for (the slightly less delicious, but still delectable) the low-calorie version four out of five days when her metabolism had begun to catch up with her.

He dipped a spoon into the ice cream quite methodically, scooping off the very top of the round sphere smoothly. With just as much delicacy, he opened his mouth slightly, and slipped in the spoon. He closed his lips around the spoon, and then slowly pulled it out, leaving the ice cream behind to melt upon his tongue.

The storm in his eyes quieted as his eyelids dropped slightly, and though not even a sliver of a smile crossed his pristine features, she could tell he was savoring the sweetness of chocolate completely, allowing all his frustrations to slip away into an unbridled happiness for a mere fraction of a moment.

He truly loved chocolate ice cream. It seemed, to her, to be the one and only thing that made his worries slide away, if only for a moment. It gave him a moment every day. He could pretend, for a moment, that he was an unnamed silly young child, free of responsibility, who loved nothing more than to have his sweet chocolate and laugh and smile.

After seeing that first blissful spoonful of ice cream, she turned her head away. For one, it was his time – a private time that she knew she couldn't intrude on for more than a second or two. For another, should he chance a glance in this direction, she didn't want him to see the quiet smile that crossed her face.

This was her secret, and her secret alone, to bear. Nobody else knew this side of him existed; until she had seen it for herself, she had thought it impossible as well. Not even her best friends would understand, if she ever dared tell the two of them. The world would never believe.

And so, she would never tell.

She dipped her spoon into the pumpkin ice cream, and let her own silly, childish bliss ensue.

Delicious.

Time slipped by. These short thirty minutes of her day passed her by far too quickly. Before long, her entire bowl of ice cream was gone, and, being Friday, the taste of her deliciously _not_ low-calorie pumpkin ice cream lingered in her mouth sweetly, reminding her that this time would not come again until Monday, and she would have to savor it.

Savor it she did. She sat back in the wiry chair, pulling out some silver sickles from her purse as she did. She placed them in the empty bowl, and pulled out her wand. "_Scourgify,_" she murmured. The bowl was clean now, with no scraps of ice cream left. Dexter Fortescue would clean the bowls as they were returned, yes, but she liked to spare him the extra effort when it was so easy to perform so simple a spell. The older man deserved it for giving her weekdays a little extra something to look forward to.

With a tap of her wand, the bowl hovered into the air, and with a tiny little pop appeared back inside the shop. Smiling with pleasure, she stood, and turned her head one last time to the table on the other side of the courtyard, where he sat.

He was tapping his wand with one hand to an empty bowl, a slight scowl on his face. His chin rested firmly in one hand, propped up on his elbow.

The smile on her face dropped away. He was lonely. God, but he was lonely. The aching in his unguarded eyes was absolutely unmistakable. And something in that expression squeezed her heart, hurting her.

When had his lonely pain become hers as well?

Before a gasp at the sudden stabbing could escape her mouth, she whirled around and Disapparated.

She wondered, in that moment before she went back to the world, in that second before she could look upon him with nothing less than sheer hatred – she wondered, when did he become no longer an enemy, a symbol of hatred, but _human_ to me? And what would he do if he knew? What would everybody else do?

Like everything else involving that man, it was a mystery at which she could only guess.

Swallowing the pain, she allowed her life to continue: undisturbed, unchanged.

-(YnT)-

I have recently, in the past week or two, succumbed to Potterfever, and attribute the creation of this little Dramione piece to it. With any luck my ailment (fun though it is) will pass in a week or two, and I'll be back to writing my usual fandom. But, to be frank, I couldn't resist.

This takes place, I imagine, about five or six years after the main events of Deathly Hallows. It stands alone as an epilogue-compatible oneshot; however, I may be persuaded to continue it into a fully-fledged Dramione fic (which for obvious reasons would no longer be epilogue-compatible). For now, it remains a oneshot - but feel free to change my mind!

Dedicated, with thanks, to Meiling, who has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams in her endeavor to warp and twist my mind to the dark side.

A final note: does anybody else have a sudden craving to have a scoop of pumpkin and a scoop of chocolate together? I imagine it would taste delicious. Fanfic-inspired cravings annoy me.


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